Mendocino releases CDP software

Posted on September 26, 2005

—Mendocino Software today announced RecoveryONE, block-based recovery management software that the company claims will return any application, database, or file system to any previous point in time or process. RecoveryONE is continuous data protection (CDP) software that will be distributed later this year by two unnamed "major vendors," one of which is rumored to be EMC. (EMC is expected to make a CDP announcement at the Storage Networking World conference in Orlando, Oct. 24 ? 27. Last week, EMC introduce a "near" CDP product; see "EMC adds snapshots, hints at CDP.")

RecoveryONE uses both event-addressable and time-addressable storage in its recovery management engine. Event-addressable storage helps users choose the right recovery time based on user-defined event markers, such as database checkpoints. This minimizes the trial and error that often occurs when trying to find the right snapshot, as in time-addressable storage, from which to recover.

Mendocino is not out to replace tape with RecoveryONE, but intends to be complementary to it. The technology is best suited for mission-critical applications, which are usually around 20% of a company's applications. Administrators can choose the applications that they want to protect. The product is also intended for near-term recovery, meaning data that was stored within the past seven days.

RecoveryONE integrates with backup, replication, and management tools, and it "de-couples" application protection and recovery from production operations. Because it sits out-of-band, if it fails it won't affect production, according to Eric Burgener, vice president of marketing at Mendocino.

Rather than building up a sales staff, Mendocino will OEM its software. "Users are more comfortable with large storage vendors than with small startups," says Burgener. "They want to know that the company will be around for the long term."